At Mercer Street Veterinary Hospital, we strongly believe in practicing the best quality preventive and wellness care for our patients. This is the best way to make sure your pet lives a long healthy life with none or least number of problems.

Our wellness recommendations include:

Annual Exam: This is actually the most important part of your pet’s health. Remember, pets age much faster than us. A good annual exam can reveal conditions that can be treated or managed better if diagnosed early. We recommend annual exam for pets under 7 years and an exam every 6 months for senior age pets.

For pets with chronic conditions, we recommend semi-annual health exams for better monitoring. We even offer special discounts for new clients visit in this regard.

Vaccinations: Mercer Street veterinarians tailor vaccination protocols for dogs and cats as per their life style and not by the number of vaccines available in the market.

Wellness testing: Our team highly recommends annual blood, urine and fecal testing for all of our patients less than 6 or 7 years old, we call this adult wellness testing.

Pets more than 7 are considered senior and require more monitoring than adult ones and for them we recommend annual blood, urine, fecal and x-rays. Unless your pet is on monthly heartworm/internal parasite prevention, we recommend fecal tests twice a year.

Monthly heartworm/internal parasite prevention: Historically, heartworm was not as common in Western Washington as it was in some of the southern and eastern states. But we still have heard and seen sporadic episodes of heartworm infection and due to weather changes in recent years, the incidence is actually increasing.

So we recommend annual heartworm testing and monthly prevention for heartworm. This medication also prevents various internal parasites including hookworms, roundworms, tapeworms etc. Using such preventive care keeps your pet free of those deadly parasites and also keeps your environment clean.

It is also very important from public health point of view as many of these parasites can transmit to humans especially kids (due to their playful nature with pets) causing serious zoonotic risks.

Annual flea prevention: Flea allergy dermatitis is one of the most common skin conditions in veterinary medicine especially in this part of the country.

In the Pacific Northwest, we are known to have fleas year around and thus need strict monthly preventive care for our pets. Once a pet gets fleas, they are considered to carry tapeworms unless proven otherwise and that’s true for even indoor pets. We agree that they don’t go outside but we do and we can carry some nasty stuff on our clothes and shoes which they can interact with & get infected.

Moreover, a flea in the house can lead to a blooming overpopulation of fleas and in some cases it can be virtually impossible to get rid of.

Dentistry: Let’s say we brush our teeth more than twice a day (at least we should) and we still go to dentist every 6 months (most of us do). In the same way, pet dental health is very important.

At home dental care may include brushing their teeth at least 3 to 4 times a week, giving them a water additive (like CET Aquadent) and giving them chewable dental chews (like CET chews, enzymatic dental chews). It’s always best to brush, better to rinse and good to chew.

After first few years of their age (average 3 to 4 years), they require dental cleaning at least once a year and in some cases/breeds, even twice a year. We use state of the art dental machine and digital dental x-rays for the best available dental diagnostic and treatment.

Please call us at 206.285.0395 to schedule complimentary dental assessment with our technicians.

Microchipping: A microchip is a safe, easy and reliable method of making sure you and your pet are reunited if he or she is lost. A microchip is the size and shape of a grain of rice and is implanted underneath your pets skin, usually between the shoulder blades.

Veterinary hospitals and animal shelters across the nation are equipped with the scanners capable of detecting and reading microchips and the unique coded number which corresponds to your pet in national pet database. We use Home Again for our microchip service.

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Dr. Tine is the best Veterinarian we have ever met and we have lived in 3 states for more than many decades. She took care of Beau like he was he his own dog. Now she takes care of our cat Kiwi who has chronic kidney disease and Kiwi loves her to. Thank you Mercer Street Vets.